Well, I got the hand vac, but not the other. Hopefully that will come in time, though.

Steve and I had agreed in advance no gifts for each other this year but I was talking to someone and she expressed that she thought it was important for boys to see their fathers giving gifts to their mothers. I never thought about how our agreement might affect our growing boy. She said after all, “you are raising someone’s husband.” Very true. So I needed a hand vac and I bought one on Amazon and when it arrived, Steve threw it in a bag with a “To Mom from Dad” tag. I think the possible issue of having my boy see his father gift his mother an appliance for Christmas is a non-issue. I don’t think he paid attention at all. He was so enamored with his big gift we got him. Whatever, I needed a hand vac bad. Kayleigh is especially messy with all her cracker and cookie crumbs everywhere. Already the best $40 I’ve ever spent.

So Christmas went largely well. There were several scheduling issues, but it all worked out on both sides of our families. It was a bit different for us this year in that we were able to, on our 14th Christmas together, finally attend the gathering of Steve’s extended family. It’s always been a scheduling conflict for us previously. And this year marked the latest gathering of the year with my family not able to get together until Friday, the 28th. We were going to do Christmas day but my sister had her baby in the early morning hours of the 24th, so we pushed it back a bit. Wouldn’t have been right to meet when she was in the hospital. That’s ok, I’d rather wait and have us all together than stay on schedule and be missing some! We ended up changing last minute and seeing Steve’s family that day, instead of the next, as originally planned. Everything worked out just fine.

One very good present that we got the week before Christmas was the offer of a job to Steve. It won’t start until mid-January, but even that’s been moved up from early Feb. He’s been laid off since mid-March so this is a great blessing, unemployment is about to run out for good. We’ll probably have to do a few weeks of no-income whatsoever, but we’ll be fine. This will be a steady job, I don’t think he’ll have any need to worry about being laid off, and it’s a good environment, something I know he’s been craving since his last job. He will also be the closest to home that he’s worked in about 7 years, so that will be really nice. No more hour and a half drives home! His off days will be a bit strange but we’ll get used to it in no time.

Another amazing gift was one from Steve’s brother and his wife. This is not just a Christmas gift but a “thank you” for all the help Steve’s been giving them in their extensive kitchen remodeling project. As I opened the present in “layers” (as she said), I said, “you’re setting us up for a date night!” That in itself is great, but the next piece I opened revealed a night in a Hilton! She forgot to include the babysitting coupon, but that’s on the table. How nice, I can’t get over how sweet they are. I love having them as not only in-laws but friends.